Sam Green is a documentary filmmaker. He’s made many movies including most recently A Thousand Thoughts, a live cinematic collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. Previous “live documentaries” include The Measure of All Things and The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, featuring the indie rock band Yo La Tengo. Sam’s documentary The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Heartbroken to hear about the death of Bill Siegel. Bill and I were old friends and collaborators – we made “The Weather Underground” and traveled many miles together. Bill was a lover of life and people and the world and probably got more pleasure from being alive than anyone I’ve ever known. Bill made a number of strong films, carried on deep and lifelong friendships, and also had two kids whom he loved and was thrilled by. The world will miss him badly.

Here’s an interview Kronos and I did at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival recently. I was happy because normally it’s just David Harrington and I who do press. This interview involved all five of us, and it was great to hear John, Hank, and Sunny’s thoughts.

We had a great show of A Thousand Thoughts the other night at the ACE Hotel Theater in Los Angeles! One of the best so far. First of all, that venue!! The theater was built in 1927 by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as the flagship location of their United Artists studio. It changed hands many times over the years, but eventually the crazy televangelist Dr. Gene Scott owned it for a long stretch. That’s why it was never ‘renovated.’ It’s a fantastic room for live performance, and the sold out crowd was great. Thanks to Kristy Edmunds and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA for putting it on.

I’m honored to be the recipient of a 2018 Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellowship! The Sundance Documentary Fund is a great force in the doc field and it’s a thrill to be involved with them in this way. It’s also a plus that I’m a big fan of all of the other fellows’ work: Natalia Almada, Deborah Stratman, and Sky Hopinka.

I filmed an interview with Kane Tanaka, the oldest person in the world, in Fukuoka, Japan the other day. She’s 115 years old and credits her long life to family, sleep, not thinking too hard about things, and playing Othello. It was a great inspiration to meet her. The interview is for the ongoing documentary project I’m working on, The Oldest Person in the World.

Tickets are now on sale for our upcoming shows of A Thousand Thoughts in Los Angeles (Dec. 7) and New York (April 25)!!! Please get your tix early; both shows are likely to sell out, and we don’t want you standing outside the venue, feeling like a shmoe.

We had a great show of A Thousand Thoughts at the National Opera House in Athens! Wow – what a venue! It was a free show put on by the Summer Nostos Festival. It was our first time presenting this piece in a country where English is not universally spoken, so I was unclear how it might resonate. Would the humor translate? Was it too “American” to be meaningful to a Greek audience. They projected subtitles, and it seemed to all work fine. It was a packed house and a great audience – big standing ovation for the Kronos Quartet. Thank you to Christos Konstantakopoulos for making the screening happen. We’re off for the summer now – more screenings in the fall and then 2019. Check out https://athousandthoughts.film/shows/ for details.